In his second novel, Ruaridh Nicoll mixes three familiar novelistic situations: the urban couple who retreat to the countryside to examine their relationship; the village that hides terrible secrets under its placid exterior; and the effect of a big "issue" on a contained community. In fact, he uses two issues, both inspired by recent historical events: foot and mouth disease and the loss of a fishing-boat.

These dramatic threads are drawn together by Betsy Gillander, the outsider who stumbles across the village's horrors, peeking inside the woodshed, lifting the lid on secrets. She has the wide eyes of the title, and her naivety allows her to fall into situations that more worldly people would avoid.

Betsy travels to a little Scottish fishing village with her fiancé to celebrate his first success as an advertising copywriter. When they quarrel, he returns to the city and she stays in the village, first to sort her thoughts, then to give assistance to the traumatised villagers: her arrival has coincided with the sinking of a boat in a terrible storm. Every family is affected. As the village becomes the focus of a media frenzy, Betsy comforts one of the widows and befriends the ship's owner, a Scotsman of Hispanic descent who shields his secrets beneath swarthy skin and brooding eyes.

Nicoll is also a journalist, and his instinctive sympathy for the profession permeates this book. The skulking hacks who descend on the village are despised by every villager, but they are the most warmly drawn characters in the novel, and it is no surprise when, after all the dirty secrets have been exposed to daylight, Betsy departs with one of them, bound for Edinburgh and possible romance.

Apart from a few contemporary references - Jon Snow, mobile phones - the book has a curiously dated atmosphere, and might have been written in the 50s. Several of the characters could have leapt straight from the pages of an Iris Murdoch novel: the psychotic fiancé, for instance, who hurls teacups around when Betsy dumps him, then takes his revenge by denouncing her to the tabloids for a long-forgotten fling with her boss.

But Nicoll lacks Murdoch's ability to plunge right into the core of characters. Although he writes intricate, accurate prose and offers alluring descriptions of the Scottish landscape, he commits one sin which is unforgivable for a psychological novelist: the psychology of his characters is never completely believable. His naive heroine is just too wide-eyed and foolish; his villains froth at the mouth with operatic ease; confrontations between the characters remain melodramatic rather than really convincing.

According to the publisher's press release, Nicoll moved to Galloway to write this book, choosing a spot near the scene of the Solway Harvester disaster in 2000, when a fishing-boat sank in a terrible storm and seven men died. Nicoll happened to arrive in the area on the same day as the first case of foot and mouth. For a journalist, this would seem like a fabulous stroke of good fortune. A novelist needs a little more distance from the events that he describes. The landscape of Wide Eyed is beautiful and the situation is fascinating, but the population never quite comes to life - and so the novel feels more like well-observed journalism than a truly fictional creation.